About

The Gothic Imagination is based at the University of Stirling, Scotland and provides an interdisciplinary forum for lively discussion and critical debate concerning all manifestations of the Gothic mode. Queries to Dr Timothy Jones on timothy.jones@stir.ac.uk.

2014 August

The Fantastic and European Gothic: History, Literature and the French Revolution.
By Matthew Gibson.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, drugs 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-7083-2572-8
Reviewed by Scott Brewster
Matthew Gibson’s study, part of the University of Wales Press Gothic Literary Studies series, examines the development of the fantastic in post-Napoleonic France, an area hitherto paid relatively scant attention by Anglophone critics. Gibson draws on critical work in German and French to restore the reputation of neglected figures such as Charles Nodier and Paul Féval, who deploy the fanta

On the 24th of July I graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with a MA in English Studies, specializing in the Gothic. The first half of that title is greeted with a half “congratulations” hovering on the well wishers lips; the latter half is met with a quizzical raising of the eyebrows and the inevitable questions, “ oh, Like Dracula and wearing black?” and so being, in their eyes, defined. The irony of this defined status is that the gothic as a mode is a malleable term that eludes a definitive definition, as most students of the gothic are aware. Whilst studying the

On the 24th of July I graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University with a MA in English Studies, specializing in the Gothic. The first half of that title is greeted with a half “congratulations” hovering on the well wishers lips; the latter half is met with a quizzical raising of the eyebrows and the inevitable questions, “ oh, Like Dracula and wearing black?” and so being, in their eyes, defined. The irony of this defined status is that the gothic as a mode is a malleable term that eludes a definitive definition, as most students of the gothic are aware. Whilst studying the

Since its initial publication in 1955, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita has been renowned (or infamous) for its controversial plot that charts a middle-aged professor Humbert Humbert’s paedophilic infatuation for a 12-year-old girl Dolores Haze, whom the former amorously nicknames Lolita. In constructing the episodes of such a distorted psyche—interestingly and unmistakably—Nabokov intertextually refers to his 19th-century American precursor Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” in naming Humbert’s childhood love “Annabel Leigh.” Annabel Leigh’s premature death results in

(Part One is here and Part Two is here)
So far the focus of the past two posts has been discussing the parallels between Lovecraft’s use of fear and how he generates this emotion within his reader’s minds and the ways in which Victoria Snaith is attempting to emulate a similar emotive response through various directorial decisions she employs to develop the newest piece for her drama company, Dread Falls Theatre, a show called Father Dagon, based on Lovecraft’s writings. As almost a miniature duplicate of this set of decisions, embedded within the overall performance, is yet another par

(to see the first part of this three part post, go here)
In this second post on Dread Falls Theatre’s upcoming immersive performance piece, Father Dagon, based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft, I want to further detail the ways in which Victoria Snaith, director of the show and owner of the company, expects to embrace Lovecraft’s sensibilities in a non-traditional performative setting. As mentioned in the previous post, one of Lovecraft’s main threads incorporated throughout many of his works is instilling a sense of fear, both in the reader and the protagonist’s psyche, specifically a

A review by the University of Sheffield's Gothic Reading Group:
Last month marked a special occasion for the history of the Gothic, as the University of Sheffield celebrated Ann Radcliffe’s 250th birthday with the first ever international academic conference dedicated entirely to ‘the great enchantress’ and her works. Ann Radcliffe at 250: Gothic and Romantic Imaginations ran for three days, between the 27th and 29th of June. The event was the result of long-planning and hard work on the part of its chief organisers, The University of Stirling’s Dr. Dale Townshend and Sheffield’s

Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature, Film. By Elisabeth Bronfen. Trans. Elisabeth Bronfen with David Brenner.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
ISBN: 978 0 231 14799 6
Reviewed by Scott Brewster
Elisabeth Bronfen has long had something of the night about her. So much is apparent from the landmark study Over Her Dead Body (MUP, 1992), whose cover image is Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare. Fuseli’s phantasmagoric imbrication of fear, imagination and death epitomizes the Gothic and its ambivalent relation to the nocturnal. The woman sprawled on her bed is not dead, but sleeping; s

About

The Gothic Imagination is based at the University of Stirling, Scotland and provides an interdisciplinary forum for lively discussion and critical debate concerning all manifestations of the Gothic mode. Queries to glennis.byron@stir.ac.uk or dale.townshend@stir.ac.uk